What’s more realistic: A unicorn, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, or a successful government program? This isn’t a trick question. Even though I’ve presented both theoretical and empirical arguments against government spending, that doesn’t mean every government…
Daily Analysis
If You Could Reform only One Major Entitlement Program, Which One Would You Pick?
This is a tough question. I obviously want comprehensive reform of all entitlement programs, so selecting just one is a bit of a challenge. Sort of like being asked to pick your favorite kid. Would I reform Social Security? That’s a logical choice. It’s the biggest…
Do You Live in a “Death Spiral” State?
Three years ago, I put together a “Moocher Index” that measured the degree to which non-poor people in a state were benefiting from redistribution programs. As you can see if you click on the nearby table, Vermont was the worst state, followed by Mississippi, Maine,…
How the Welfare State Traps the Poor in Dependency, the British Version
Back in 2011, I linked to a simple chart that illustrated how handouts and subsidies create very high implicit marginal tax rates for low-income people and explained how “generosity” from the government leads to a tar-paper effect that limits upward mobility. Earlier…
The Fiscal Burden of the Welfare State: A Picture Says a Thousand Words
Here’s a remarkable chart showing that we spend about $60,000 on various welfare programs for every poor household in America. And what are we getting for that giant expenditure of money? Well, as this other chart shows, our progress in the fight against poverty came…
The Federalism Solution to the Medicaid Nightmare
This election season has seen lots of talk (and demagoguery) about whether investors, entrepreneurs, and small business owners should be hit with class-warfare tax policy. And there’s also been lots of debate about the best way of averting bankruptcy for Medicare,…
The Problem Is Federally Subsidized School Lunches, Not Michelle Obama’s Healthy Food Initiative
Some people are grumbling that the First Lady has taken the joy out of school lunches. She’s identified with the “Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010,” which uses federal funding to coerce schools into providing meals with fewer calories. But I think this criticism…
America Isn’t (Yet) a Divided Nation of “Makers” and “Takers,” but some on the Left Are Pushing Dependency as a Political Strategy
I’m part of a just-posted online Debate Club sponsored by U.S. News & World Report which asks “Is the United States a Nation of ‘Makers and Takers?’” My contribution to the discussion is basically a reworked version of what I wrote last week about Romney and the…
Does the $16 Trillion Debt Matter? A Remedial Lesson in Public Finance Economics for the GOP
Everyone has a cross to bear in life, some sort of burden or obligation, often self-imposed. For some inexplicable reason, I’ve decided that one of my responsibilities is to educate a backwards and primitive people who seem impervious to common sense, simple logic,…
Will American Exceptionalism Be Destroyed by the Entitlement Society?
I wrote a celebratory post last November about the dramatic difference between Americans and Europeans. There truly is American exceptionalism in that Europeans are much more likely to think it is government’s responsibility to provide the basics of life. Another poll…